Why More Pilot Studies of Elder Mistreatment Are Necessary

Abstract

Prevalence studies tend to be the main platforms for policy, practice, and research progress, both nationally and internationally, it is important that prevalence studies be carefully crafted to provide the very best evidence possible to end mistreatment. The aim of the research here is to report the data from the pilot study that was a precursor to the National Survey on the Mistreatment of Older Canadians (NSMOC) in 2015 (n = 8,100). The pilot study adopted a different perspective than most studies on the prevalence of elder abuse and neglect, which raised a number of interesting methodological issues about past and future prevalence studies. The study is one of the first to use a life course perspective as a guiding framework. The aim of this chapter was to describe the pilot study that focused on the validation of the community survey instrument for the national Canadian study on elder mistreatment and highlight the lessons learned. The known group approach indicated the conflict tactics scale used by most researchers is moderately valid and that there is a large gap between this measure and whether older adults actually felt they had been mistreated.